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TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Background and significance of the study … 1
1.2. Objectives …………………………………. 2
1.3. Overview of the study……………………… 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1. Speech acts …………………………………. 4
2.2. Politeness…………………………………… 7
2.2.1. Theory of politeness………. 7
2.2.2. Social factors affecting politeness …………………………………8
2.2.3. The notion of face ……………………………………………… 9
2.2.4. The notion of positive and negative politeness……………… …….9
2.3. Directness and indirectness………………… 10
2.3.1. Direct speech acts…………. 10
2.3.2. Indirect speech acts………… 11
2.4. Cooperative principles………………………. 12
2.5. The speech act of comfort…………………. 14
2.6. Politeness in expressing sympathy………… 14
2.7. Sympathy and antipathy…… ………………………………………… 17

CHAPTER 3: METHODLOGY 19
3.1. Research methods of the study…………… 19
3.2. Research questions…………………………. 19
3.3. Research design…………………………… 19
3.3. 1. Selection of subjects………. 19
3.3.2. Data collection instruments……. 20

APPENDIX D………………………………………………………….…….XII
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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts…………………………………….10
Table 2: The external modifications……………………………… 26
Table 3: Sympathy strategies by American and Vietnamese speakers ……….29
Table 4: Distribution of different types of sympathy external modifications between
two nations……………………………………………………… 30
Table 5: The range of selected internal modifications by two nations……… 31
Table 6: The realization of sympathy expression……………………… 32
Table 7: The realization of preferable sympathy structures………………… 36 8
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: The choice of sympathy strategies …………………………… ….29
Figure 2: Different types of sympathy External Modifications…………… 31

9
PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Background and significance of the study

10
Similarly, in a study on complaining; Hanh (2003) pointed out the similarities
and differences in formulation of the speech act of complaint with respect to the use of
complaint strategies, directive acts and external modifiers. IT also showed a variety of
differences between Vietnamese speakers and Australian speakers. It concludes that
complaints can be realized in a great variety of forms depending on a particular context.
These studies have provided some significant insights in to both the problems
Vietnamese learners of English as well as area where Vietnamese learners have fewer
difficulties.
However, to date a study on politeness strategies of sympathy expressions in
American and Vietnamese has not yet been adequately investigated. Therefore, the aim
of this study is to compare the realization of the speech act of sympathy by Vietnamese
native speakers and the American speakers in order to fill in the gap in research in this
area.
This study concentrates on answering the following questions:
1. What politeness strategies do Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied?
2. What politeness strategies do American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied?
2. The scope of the study
This study is aimed at comparing sympathy expressions in Vietnamese with
those in English with particular references to the theory of speech acts. Besides, it is to
uncover differences in sympathy expressions of the two populations in terms of
linguistics.
The study focuses mainly on verbal communication and the analysis of the data
collected from the survey questionnaire on expressing sympathy. The target groups
who express sympathy are common American and Vietnamese speakers in all situations
from work to private home. Further, the study is confined to ten selected situations. In
such situations, the Speaker is familiar with the Hearer.
3. The organization of the study

1. Speech act
This section begins with a brief overview of the theory of speech acts and then
the speech act classifications.
The theory of speech acts has been so far developed by many pragmatists such
as Austin (1962), Grice (1975), Searle (1969), Levison (1983), Brown & Yule (1983)
and others. What they share is that a speech act is a unit of speaking and each unit
performs certain functions in interaction such as request, invitation, complaint, apology,
prohibition, etc. Speech Act theory began with the work “How to do things with words”
by John Austin (1962). Austin was convinced that we do not just use language to make
utterances, but to perform actions. It was this conviction which led him to a theory of
what he called illocutionary act.
The speech act theory was then developed by another philosopher, John R.
Searle. He states that language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those
verbal acts such as requesting, threatening and promising, etc. That one performs in
speaking (Searle, 1969, p24).
Sharing the same idea, Nunan (1993: 65) finds out that “when using language,
we not only make propositional statements about objects, entities, states of affairs and
so on, but we also fulfill functions, such as requesting, denying, introducing,
apologizing, etc.”
When uttering a sentence, the Speaker is not only characteristically performing
several acts but also bringing a bout certain effects on the Hearer. According to Austin
(1962), and Searle (1969), a speech act always consists of three related acts:
Locutionary act, Illocutionary act and Perlocutionary act. First, the locutionary act is
simply the act that we perform in saying something or producing a meaningful 13
linguistic expression. In Searle‟s view, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by
expressing his/her intention to get someone to do something, to assert something… in a
way that the listener can realize the speaker‟s intention. For example, one might say


14
Example 2:
A. Please bring me the menu.
B. Could you get me a glass of water?
Commissives are speech acts that Speaker uses to commit himself to some
future course of action. They express what the Speaker intends. Speech acts belonging
to this group are promises, threats, refusals, etc. In performing a commissive, Speaker
makes the world match the words (via the Speaker).
Example 3:
A. I promise to give the book back to you after I finish reading it.
B. We will not return until mid-night.
Expressives are speech acts that express an inner state like feelings or attitudes
to some prior action or state of affairs. These can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes
or dislikes, etc. With an expressive, Speaker makes the words match the world
(feeling).
Example 4:
A. I am thankful for such good friends.
B. What a beautiful lady!
Declaratives are speech acts that make the world change via utterances. By
using a declarative, Speaker wants to make both the world match the words and the
words match the world.
Example 5:
A. I now pronounce you husband and wife.
B. Hereby, I declare this meeting open.
In this example, when (B) is said, a change really takes place people start to make
speeches or address the meeting and so on.
It can be seen that expressing sympathy is of Expressive type of illocutionary
act when people offer sympathy; they want to share others their feelings, especially
their sadness or disappointment. In Wikipedia, sympathy is defined as “a social affinity

are you doing?”. As for Vietnamese, this way of greeting is said to be popular and
polite because it shows the care for the hearer. However, if an American man was asked
such questions, he would think that Vietnamese were so impolite and curious.
2.2. Social factors affecting politeness
When we communicate with each other, our choice of expressions in a given context
will be influenced by numerous factors that identify our faces in society. According to
Crystal (1992), the language we use has a clear link to the following identities:
- Physical identity: Sex, age, physical type and condition.
- Psychological identity: personality, intelligence, etc. 16
- Geographical identity: accents, dialects, linguistic areas, etc.
- Ethnic and national identity: ethnicity and nationalism.
- Social identity: Class, status, role, distance.
- Contextual identity: settings, participants and activities.
Among those identities, psychological identity is said to be one important factor
that affects Vietnamese people‟s choice of politeness strategy. Unlike the American,
Vietnamese people are more reserved. In other words, they are shy when expressing
their thoughts using politeness strategy.
Moreover, Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that there are three independent variables
that have a systematic effect on the choice of appropriate, polite expressions in
performing a FTA under a certain circumstance, outlined as follows:
- The social distance (D) of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The relative power (P) of the Speaker and the Hearer.
- The absolute ranking of imposition (R) in the particular culture.
The social distance in Brown & Levinson‟s (1987) terminology is a symmetricsocial
dimension of similarity/difference within which the Speaker and the Hearer stand for
the purposes of this act. In effect, it is the degree of familiarity and solidarity the
Speaker and the Hearer share as represented through in-group or out-group

face and negative face ,which were two related aspects of the same entity and referred
to two basic „desires‟ or „wants‟ of any individual in any interaction. An individual‟s
positive face was reflected in his or her desire to be liked, approved of, respected and
appreciated by others. An individual negative face was reflected by the desire not to be
impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chose.
According to Yule (1996, p62), a face saving act which is oriented to the person‟s
negative face will tend to show deference, emphasize the importance of the
interruption. This is also called negative politeness. A face saving act which is
concerned with the person‟s positive face will tend to show solidarity, emphasize that
both speakers want the same thing, and that they have a common goal. This is also
called positive politeness.
3. Directness and indirect speech act
Pragmatic literature classifies speech act according to the degree of their
explicitness or directness. Speech acts could be replaced on a continuum ranging from
the most direct down to the least direct act which may even be confused with normal
constative utterance. It is important that speakers be aware of this continuum because
the degree of explicitness that is opposite for a given social context is vital to observe.
Any failure in this respect can misfire and cause undesirable effects.
3.1. Direct speech acts 18
Direct speech acts are those acts where the utterance explicitly abides by its
felicity conditions (especially the structural ones). There are three basic types of direct
speech acts, and they correspond to three special syntactic types that seem to occur in
most of the world‟s languages.
Table 1: Basic types of direct speech acts
Speech act
Sentence
type

Or simply a cause and effect relationship between physical events:
(C) If you heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, it will boil.
A consideration of the syntactic means available for expressing the various
speech acts leads us to recognize that even for the three basic speech acts laid out in the
table above, speakers may choose means of expressions other than the basic type
associated with the speech act is question. 19
To some extent, this just reflects the existence of a diversity of means
expression, but a more pervasive reason is that speakers may use indirect rather than
direct speech acts.
3.2. Indirect speech acts
Indirect speech acts rely more on context in order to reconstruct the underlying
speech acts performed. They are used all the time, and become second nature to us.
Please take a look at the following example.
A: Has our son gone to bed yet?
B: His computer is running.
In this example, the speaker A has asked a Yes/No question. However, speaker
B did not follow up with such a reply. The point here is that B has just violated one of
the aforementioned Gricean maxims (Relevance). But B‟s response is not irrelevant. In
B‟s response,, it is understood illiterally. His answer assumes the son often works on
hiss computer until he is in bed. This is just one of many cases of an indirect speech act.
These acts violate at least one of the maxims. Good listeners/speakers notice that the
maxim is intentionally being violated, and can identify its intended meaning with the
knowledge of the context of the situation.
Leech (1983:108) has proposed a theory of politeness based on the cost and
benefit to the Hearer and the amount of optionality given to the Hearer. He claims that
one can increase the degree of politeness by increasing degree of indirectness of the
illocution because “indirect illocutions tend to be more polite since they increase the

are needed (quantity), straight nails rather than bent ones (quality) and she will do all
this quickly and efficiently (manner).
 Maxim of Quality: speakers should be truthful. They should not say what they
think is false, or make statements for which they have no evidence. For instance, if I
say to someone visiting a Vietnamese newly-born baby: “Do not say “the baby is so
strong”, the implicature is that I believe to do so would make the baby‟s family
unhappy as it is their superstition that saying so would make the baby worse. Similarly,
this can also work with questions. If you ask me, “What is conversational implicature?”
I will assume that the question is sincere and that it carries the implicature that you
don‟t know what it is, that you want to know, and that you think I can tell you.
 Maxim of Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as is required for
the conversation to proceed. It should be neither too little, nor too much. (It is nor clear
how one can decide what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given case).
For example, someone said to me about the local football team “They are doing a good 21
job.” This implicature was that they were not on the top. If they had been, the speaker
would have said so.
 Maxim of Relevance: speakers‟ contributions should relate clearly to the
purpose of the exchange. For example, I say to a friend “Are you coming to the theatre
tonight?” and she replied “It‟s Peter‟s staff Christmas party”. This would seem to be at
a completely irrelevant remark if I did not know that Peter is her husband and that they
always go to each staff parties.
 Maxim of Manner: speakers‟ contributions should be perspicuous: clear, orderly
and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity. For example, “I got home and took a
bath.” Carries the implicature that I did those things in that order.
All these maxims can be flouted. Deliberate lies, rhetorical questions tautology and
even metaphors could be regarded as flouting one or more of them; and how often do
we try to change the subject with a tempting red-herring if we don‟t like the way the

In summary, sympathy is triggered by the realization of a negative emotional state of
another person. It can cause some emotional response in a person, yet there is little
evidence to suggest that it is associated with a bodily sensation. Sympathy can be
expressed to another person, but it is restricted to situations when the people are in
contact with each other. Since sympathy can be experienced in situations when one
does not know another person or has no contact with that person, this feature cannot be
regarded as an invariant of the meaning.
6. Politeness in expressing sympathy
As all linguistic actions involve face-threat of some kinds, people have to resort
to politeness principles or strategies when performing face-saving acts (FSAS).
Leech (1983:160) introduces a number of maxims, which are necessary as he urges, in
order to explain the relationship between sense and force in human conversation. They
range from those which have very extensive but by no means universal applicability, to
the some what idiosyncratic. The main maxims are:
- Tact maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which employ cost to other.
+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which imply benefit to other
- Generosity maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs to self
+ Maximize the expression of cost to self
- Approbation maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of beliefs which express dispraise of other
+ Maximize the expression of beliefs which express approval of order 23
- Modesty maxim:
+ Minimize the expression of praise of self
+ Maximize the expression of dispraise of self
- Agreement maxim:

24
Negative politeness
- Be direct: I‟m looking for a pen.
- Request forgiveness: You must forgive me but…
- Minimize imposition: I just want to ask you if I could use your computer?
- Pluralize the person responsible: We forgot to tell you that you needed to buy
your plane ticket by yesterday.
Off and on Record
- Give hints: It‟s a bit cold in here.
- Be vague: Perhaps someone should have been more responsible.
- Be sarcastic, or joking: Yeah, he‟s a real Einstein (rocket scientist, Stephen
Hawking, genius and so on)!
According to Brown and Levinson (in Thomas, 1995:169), the first decision to
be made is whether to perform the face threatening act (FTA) or not. If the speaker
decides to perform the FTA, he or she should adopt certain strategies. The choice of
strategy will be made on the basis of the speaker‟s assessment of the size of the FTA.
The speaker can calculate the size of the FTA on the basis of the parameters of power
(P), distance (D) and rating of imposition (R). These combined values determine the
overall “weightiness” on the FTA which in turn influences the strategy used. Therefore,
the speaker can use statements which are not directly addressed to the other. These
statements are technically described as being off record (hints). In contrast to such off
record statements, the speaker can directly address the other as a means of expressing
his/her needs. The most direct approach, using imperative forms is known as bald on
record (Yule, 1996:63).
7. Sympathy and antipathy
Sympathy means a "feeling with” objects; and that distinguishes it from
antipathy. Moreover, sympathy involves some reasoning and is thus on a level with
social values and above antipathy.
Sympathy usually indicates a sharing of the joy or sorrow that another feels. At
the least, it leads to an understanding of the other and consequently tends to bring

not happen often: antipathies usually do not arouse sympathetic sentiments. Indeed,
they often preclude the development of sympathetic social interaction, as in those cases
where race prejudice is sup- ported by antipathies. We would be very close to reality if
we spoke of "response" in matters arousing sympathy and of “reaction" where antipathy
operates.
In this chapter, the major issues of speech act theory and politeness in general
and speech act of comfort and politeness in expressing sympathy in particular have
been discussed. Besides, this chapter has also compared sympathy and antipathy and 26
reviewed the issues of directness and indirectness and the cooperative principle. Next
chapter will reveal the study methodology. 27
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
In this chapter, the following issues have been investigated. Section 3.1 points out the
aims of the study whereas section 3.2. presents the research questions. Section 3.3.
describes the research design. The last section introduces the analytical framework of
the study.
1. Aims of the study
This study aims to find out:
1. The politeness strategies that Vietnamese speakers use in expressing sympathy
in the contexts studied.
2. The politeness strategies that American speakers use in expressing sympathy in
the contexts studied.
2. Research questions
In order to identify the politeness strategies preferably used by Vietnamese and
American speakers in expressing sympathy, these research questions will be addressed:

disadvantages. The good point of this method is that the researcher can obtain linguistic
strategy actually used in various contexts in a given language and culture. However,
this method is time and money-consuming. This method also seems to be hardly
possible for the fact that Vietnamese learners of English seldom have the chance of
operating within a real target language environment and for many reasons they do not
want to be recorded.
Multiple choice methods, in which a series of questions are prepared with
answers and the subjects are asked to choose the answers they think are the most
appropriate, has been used by many researchers. This method enables the researchers to
get information from a large number of the subjects in a short time. However, it does
not provide as many possibilities in the case of open-ended questions and the subjects
may become inactive when answering the questions for the design of the questionnaire.
In this study, for the collection of sufficient data within the time and resource
constraints available, the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) (Cohen, 1996 – quoted in
Tam, 1998, p.47) seems to outweigh its advantages.
It allows elicitation of data from a large sample of subjects relatively easily, using the
same situations where contextual variables can be controlled. Further, the DCT is an
effective means of studying the stereotypical perceived requirements for a socially
appropriate response and is a good way to gain insight into social and psychological
factors that are likely to affect speech and performance (Beebe, 1985). Moreover,
Cohen (1996) assumes that the DCT and other written approaches not only save time 29
but also can provide comparable data to that collected from oral role-play. He also
concludes that “discourse completion tests are an effective means of gathering a large
amount of data quickly, creating an initial classification of semantic formulas, and
ascertaining the structure of speech act under consideration”.
Based on the theory of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), two
questionnaires are applied into the study: Meta-pragmatic questionnaire (MPQ) and the